As USB is the only way to power Re:load, I'm a bit concerned with the following figure from the manual:

"Power Consumption: Less than 5W"

Should I take that the device is pulling up to 1A from the bus, which is already twice the maximum allowed by USB specification and that's without the fan add-on installed? The fans could easily add another 2.5W (500 mA) for the total of 1.5A, right? Now, I do realize device makers are a bit "liberal" with the maximum USB supply current but that seems a bit of a stretch...

Regards,Zbig

nickjohnson
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2015-04-12T15:24:06Z —
#2

Honestly, I was being conservative when I wrote the manual. I also should have written 2.5W (500mA @ 5V), not 5W. Actual power consumption without the fan kit is about 100-150mA; the fan kit adds another 200mA max.

Zbig
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2015-04-12T15:29:37Z —
#3

That's great, thank you for clarifying that.

donbindner
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2015-05-23T22:10:20Z —
#4

It's definitely different once the fan kit is installed. I just did the fan kit, and today when I was drawing a load (about 45 watts) my Re:Load started resetting. I'd used it just a day or two ago with the fan kit and it worked fine though, so I was perplexed.

I started to worry that I'd made an error in assembling it, but it just turns out that my 1A USB charging port was apparently not up to running the Re:Load with the fans running. When I switched to a different charging port everything was fine again.

Nealz
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2015-05-23T23:25:38Z —
#5

donbinder,It's amazing how many poorly made USB power supplies are on the market. I keep around a few Apple chargers I use to proof my devices. 99.9% of the time the problem is a junk USB Charger or cable.

However I use a dedicated apple charger instead of a hub or dual port charger on my reload pro. If I ever blow up my Reload Pro I won't destroy anything else connected to the charger.

nickjohnson
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2015-05-24T07:53:25Z —
#6

That's very surprising - my own measurements show it to be way below 500mA. Do you have any way to measure USB power consumption?